Windows: Windows Explorer's "Favorites" and "Recent Places" menus leave a little bit to be desired. Chameleon Folder puts your favorite and recent folders in a simple tree-based dropdown, so they're never more than a click away.

Advertisement

Chameleon Folder adds a new hotkey to your system—by default, the middle mouse button—that opens up a new context menu, containing a list of your favorite and recently used folders. You can quickly open them in a new Explorer window, or if you're already in Explorer, navigate to that folder in one click. You can even use Chameleon folder in open and save dialogs, which is really nice. It may not look like much, but you'd be surprised how much tedium it can save you on a regular basis.

Of course, Windows Explorer already has a "Favorites" and a "Recent Items" menu—they just aren't very good. You can only stuff so many things in to Explorer's sidebar, and once you click on one, you're forced to double-click around the folder again to get to your final destination. Chameleon Folder's customizable tree-based view lets you mouse your way through folders much faster than you could in Windows Explorer, meaning you can ditch the tedious double-clicking and get where you need to go. The only downside is that you have to add folders to the tree manually—you can't tell it to just open a certain folder as a tree (for example, in the image above, you'd have to manually add each drive to the "Computer" folder, rather than just having it open your computer as a tree). Still, it's a nifty program that can save you quite a bit of time if you're willing to set it up.

Advertisement

Chameleon Folder is a free download for Windows only. Hit the link below to check it out (scroll down to the bottom of the page for the download).